[Peter]

Does "fit-to-disk" serve any usefull purpose is it just a (sic) marketing gimik?

Media Center has four quality settings - best, better, good and fair with the following video bitrates.:

Best: 6.0 Mbps
Better: 4.5 Mbps
Good: 3.0 Mbps
Fair: 2.5 Mpbs

When I try to make a DVD with version 8 it trasncodes the video into the range of 4.5 - 9.0 Mpbs. This makes the good and fair options in Media Center usless! Transcoding to a higher bitrate cannot result is better quality then the orginal source. And version 8 does a poor job of keeping the audio and video in sync when it does convert. Thefore the 2.5 - 4.5 Mbps range of Media Center is useless.

And since the higest bit-rate of Media Center is 6.0 Mpbs the 6.0 - 9.0 Mpbs range is also useless.
Leaving 4.5 - 6.0 Mbps (Best, Better) as the only usefull video bit-rates.

With MyDVD6 (which came pre-installed on my HP) I could always record with best and then just select HQ, SP, LP, EP). With EP it could transcode down to 2.3 Mbps letting me create a DVD with up to 2 hours 36 minutes using 1.54M Mpbs LPCM audio.

So in summary, with MyDVD6 I had a usable video bit-rate of 2.3 - 6.0 Mbps and a DVD of up to 2 hours 36 minutes while with the version 8 downgrade I am limited to a usefull bit-reate of 4.5 - 6.0 Mpbs an a DVD of up to 2 hours with the audio frequently being out of sync with the video. So of what use is the "fit-to-disk" feature?

[ggrussell]

Peter, on Sep 22 2006, 06:26 PM, said:

When I try to make a DVD with version 8 it trasncodes the video into the range of 4.5 - 9.0 Mpbs.

Actually, Videowave or MyDVD should not be 're-rendering' these files. I know that they do not on MY machine. However since dvr-ms are propietary MPEG 2 that include metadata (channel, date, time type info) that is NOT standard, Videowave and MyDVD will make a copy of the file so it can strip out this info to make the files standard MPEG 2 which is needed.

This post has been edited by ggrussell: 22 September 2006 - 03:45 PM

[Peter]

ggrussell, on Sep 22 2006, 04:44 PM, said:

Actually, Videowave or MyDVD should not be 're-rendering' these files. I know that they do not on MY machine. However since dvr-ms are propietary MPEG 2 that include metadata (channel, date, time type info) that is NOT standard, Videowave and MyDVD will make a copy of the file so it can strip out this info to make the files standard MPEG 2 which is needed.

Well on my machine it doesn't transcode the files when converting from dvr-ms to mpeg. (A step which my DVD did not need to do.)

But it wants to transcode before burning to DVD. In version 6 if I had a Media Center Best-Better-Good-Fair recording it would transcode it down to HQ-SP-LP-EP if it made sense but would not if it didn't. (high quality, standard play, long play, and extended play.) It had fix to disc, but would pop the web site upgrade page. It would logicaly transcode from a higher bit-rate to a lower bit rate if needed but would never up convert since this would not imporve quality.

In MyDVD6 I could convert "Best" to HQ, SP, LP, or EP.

But if I had a "Fair" recording HQ, SP, and LP all result in the same size DVD since the video bit-rate for a fair recording was not really good enough to actualy convert. Only LP would result in a smaller DVD.

In version 8 however the dialog limits one to 4.5 to 9.0 Mpbs and even then it is not automaticaly set to the bit-rate of source mpeg file. And "fit-to-disc" does not leave the bit-rate alone either. Otherwise why does a low quality "Good" file try to take up most of the DVD which is more than MyDVD6 would take up using LPCM audio?

In summary, if I actualy had 9.0 Mbps video then there might be some logic to the fit to disck feature. But since Media Center will not record more than 6.0 Mpbs and the program won't create a DVD over two hours the "fit-to-disc" feature is useless because all it is doing is using up more of the DVD without increasing the quality of the video or the lenght of the recording.


So if the "fit-to-disc" feature neither improves video quality nor allows for longer recordings what is it good for?